Son of ex-NFL player Kevin Johnson breaks silence after dad found murdered in homeless encampment

The son of slain former NFL star Kevin Johnson doesn’t want his father to be remembered for the Los Angeles homeless encampment where he was beaten and stabbed to death last month by a possible serial killer.

“He just wasn’t some homeless man standing [in an] encampment,” his heartbroken son, Branden Johnson, told ABC 7.

“He was a father, a friend, family member, an ex-husband who loved everyone around him, and I don’t want the encampment to be seen as how he went out.”

Johnson, 55, discovered the notorious camp along the LA River about six months ago, and would spend a few nights a week there before he was murdered last month — despite knowing how dangerous it was, his son said.

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“He wouldn’t put emphasis on it because he didn’t want me to worry,” Branden Johnson told ABC 7. “So he would just kind of brush it off like, you know, ‘I’ll be all right, son.’”

The camp is now tied to at least three other murders — and it’s possible the same person is behind all four killings, according to police.

Johnson’s body was found on Jan. 21 and the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide from blunt head trauma and stab wounds. Branden helped investigators identify his father’s body at the scene.

“My dad was my best friend. I talked to him almost every single day, even in the situations that he was in,” he said.  “He was just a loving, gentle person.”

Johnson’s death is one of four killings around the Compton Creek encampment over the past four months, according to investigators. 

Michelle Steele, 52, was shot in the head on Oct. 5 and died more than a month later in the hospital.

Octavio Arias, 52, was beaten to death on Dec. 4.

And just last week, Mauro Alfaro, a man in his 50s, was bludgeoned to death.

Investigators are working to determine the motive behind the killings.

It’s not clear why the former defensive lineman, who played three seasons in the NFL, was out on the streets — but friends suggested he was suffering from CTE, a degenerative brain disease associated with repeated head trauma.

“He wasn’t the type of person that would touch a fly. He had no anger in his heart, no evil – that just was not him,” Shantel Hill, Johnson’s ex-wife, told the outlet.